ChocoTravel, a travel company based in Kazakhstan, tried to create some attention around its travel services, and overshot that mark by a few thousand miles. Its recent advertising commercial, featuring nude flight attendants has make news around the globe. It was shared 71,000 times on Facebook and viewed more than 31,000 times on YouTube in the past two days. The video starts with a close-up of cap-wearing female flight attendants, from the neck up, and after the screen widens out, the women are fully nude but covered by a banner across the screen and a small hat. We thought it clever, sexy and fun. The Internet (the lesbian and liberal wing of it) thought it “tasteless” and “unpleasant”. To balance out the criticism of the video being sexist, ChocoTravel came out with a nude male video the next day.

Chloe Moretz is trying to put some ground between herself and her new film, particularly the fat shaming marketing campaign promoting the film, that tells girls being short and fat is ugly. The film, “Red Shoes & the 7 Dwarfs,” an animated film in which Chloe voices the lead character, is a twist on the tale of “Snow White,” and started getting noticed a the Cannes Film Festival last week. People started talking because of its controversial campaign billboard, which features two women — one tall and slim and the other fat and short, side by side. The tagline reads: “What if Snow White was no longer beautiful and the 7 Dwarfs not so short?” It was immediately slammed as fat shamming and Chloe has been backtracking from the film hard. She tweeted, “I have now fully reviewed the mkting for Red Shoes, I am just as appalled and angry as everyone else, this wasn’t approved by me or my team” and “The actual story is powerful for young women and resonated with me. I am sorry for the offense that was beyond my creative control”.

The billboard was pulled. And producers did some spin control. “As the producer of the theatrical animated film ‘Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs,’ now in production, Locus Corporation wishes to apologize regarding the first elements of our marketing campaign (in the form of a Cannes billboard and a trailer) which we realize has had the opposite effect from that which was intended,” one of the producers, Sujin Hwang, wrote. “Our film, a family comedy, carries a message designed to challenge social prejudices related to standards of physical beauty in society by emphasizing the importance of inner beauty.” “We appreciate and are grateful for the constructive criticism of those who brought this to our attention,” Sujin added. “We sincerely regret any embarrassment or dissatisfaction this mistaken advertising has caused to any of the individual artists or companies involved with the production or future distribution of our film, none of whom had any involvement with creating or approving the now discontinued advertising campaign.” For shame, fat shamers, for shame.

London’s transportation system, Transport for London, is banning negative body images for the next month in an effort to promote body positive messages. That is because it is an election year in London, and mayor Sadiq Khan is pledging as part of his campaign to ban adverts promoting “unhealthy or unrealistic” body images. Mayor Khan said, “As the father of two teenage girls, I am extremely concerned about this kind of advertising which can demean people, particularly women, and make them ashamed of their bodies. It is high time it came to an end.” Graeme Craig, TfL Commercial Development Director, said: “Advertising on our network is unlike TV, online and print media. Our customers cannot simply switch off or turn a page if an advertisement offends or upsets them and we have a duty to ensure the copy we carry reflects that unique environment.” Much of the political pandering is due to a Protein World “beach body ready” promotional poster that caused some outrage last year, and were defaced in London tube stations. A petition was started calling for the advertisements to be banned, but the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) ruled the campaign with a bikini-clad female model was neither offensive nor irresponsible.

But the reaction to the ban has been mixed. On the BBC London Facebook page, users like Magdalena Michalik said, “Please ban it. I don’t want my children to look at it!” while others warned it was the start of the “Islamification” of London.
Sharene Kirchler said, “What happened to free speech? What happened to not being offended by everything. Why is it a matter of state to decide when something so subjective is to be allowed or not?” We agree. We just don’t see how body shaming skinny girls promotes positive body images.

KFC Australia posted a censored picture, that looked like a woman giving a man a handjob, with the caption, “WARNING: #NSFW. Something hot and spicy is coming soon….” The advertisement didn’t really make sense, as some people pointed out before KFC Australia pulled the tweet. User @matwhi said, “xKFC, if you are experiencing “hot and spicy” sensations in your genitals, I recommend you speak to a doctor”. It also offended some people, mostly hyper-feminist women. Another user, @caseyphoenix, said, “I wish 1) I wasn’t vegetarian and 2) I didn’t insist on eating real food, so I could boycott @KFCAustralia for promoting misogyny.” Misogyny is probably a little too far, but there was definitely a misconnect between the handjob and their new special, which the advertisement said nothing about, except that it was coming. We kind of get the “coming” part, but if semen has anything to do with their new special, we want nothing to do with it (not interested in the new “secret sauce”). And “hot and spicy,” what the fuck? It sorta makes sense, a handjob is “hot and spicy” but nothing about this gels. Guess that’s why KFC pulled it. #ChickenFail.

We rarely venture into serious topics. We try to avoid them at every turn, because life is too serious already. If you want serious, type in CNN.com. But with the allegations against James Deen, we have covered rape more than we would have wanted to, because these allegations are going to dramatically change the porn industry. Trust us. But it seems James Deen isn’t the only one in rape trouble, though in a dramatically less criminal fashion. Some poor graphic designer over at SuperGurl got shit-canned, we suspect, after placing a Black Friday ad with the words “Rape Us Now.” Some have suggested it was a typographical error, that it should have been something like “Rate Us Now.” But the creative director at the company’s apology seemed to lean toward the side of it was just a really fucking stupid thing to say that was never approved. He said, “I am writing this to express our sincerest apologies pertaining to our insensitive action and the choice of word – rape during our ‘Black Friday’ sale. We do not mean for it to be offensive to anyone, and I extend my sincerest apology for the lack of a better word. As the director of the company, I have failed to review my Graphic Designer’s work before approving the image to be displayed on our site. I hereby acknowledge that we have made a mistake, and that our caption does not advocate the right values to the young women community today.” That idiot should be raped….